Jedes Business kann 10 Millionen im Jahr erreichen

0:00Unternehmer/Gast If you have the goal of getting to $10 million a year, you can pretty much do it in any business. If you have the goal with with the exception of if you are a brick and mortar and there's 100 people in your in your local market, probably not. But out outside of that, um that business model, even if you were in a tiny market, could get to 10 million a year. You just open up in new markets. That's all you do, right? Um and so most people's goals are achievable within their current vehicle. They're just too impatient and believe that there's another shiny object that somehow will get there faster. But if you take the natural extreme and say, "If I only did one thing for 40 years, do I think I'd be successful?" Probably. And so if you knew that to be true, then that would give you a very strong reason to stick with whatever you're doing. Because let me give you a visual for this.

0:41This is the cost of switching. So, if let's say that you're in year three of your current current business, okay? Or current opportunity. It doesn't really matter what it is. So, this is one, this is year two, this is year three. Okay. Now, what people want to convince themselves is that they're like, "I want to start this new thing." Okay, that's fine. You want to start this new thing. So, let's see that year one of this new thing is higher. Okay, that's fine. This one is a little bit higher than this one in year two. But the thing is is that this is year one of this year, but it's year four here.

1:18You're still behind. And not only that, growth when you get bigger is easier than growth when you're smaller. And you're like, "Okay, well, maybe maybe this fast rate of growth I'll be able to catch up." Okay, well, now you're in year two. But now we're at year five over here, right? And so the head start that you give yourself by sticking with something, like sticking with it is how you get the head start. It's how you keep the head start that you already began.

1:51Alex That's something I think so many people miss when they're trying to go to this next opportunity. Unless there is something inherently wrong with the assumption that you have, and skill is not the deficiency that you need to overcome, which it often is. Most of the time people get stuck on things that I call features not bugs, and this isn't my invention. Is that there's an element of your business that makes it hard. There's an element of every business that makes it hard, but that's what makes it a business and that's why you're compensated for it. If you're in the cleaning business, the difficulty you're going to have is attracting and retaining high quality talent. If you're in the fitness business, the difficulty is attracting customers and customer retention because people are inherently really shaky um about staying with their fitness goals, but they typically stick with their cleaners for a really long time.

2:33Right? And so every business has elements that make it shitty. It's just the name of the game. And you know what? I'll give you a different frame on this. So, if you were to think about different business models. So, let's think about I I doubt many of you guys have heard this. So, this is pretty sweet. So, let's say that you've got uh e-commerce, you've got uh let's say you've got service, you've got um let's say info, education media, and let's say you've got SaaS. All right, so software. Okay.

3:08So, let's say that these are four different opportunities. Each of these opportunities has a different shape. So, info looks like this. Starts really fast, very difficult to scale. SaaS is the opposite. Starts really really slow, scales really really fast. E-com is more like this. You can scale fast, but there's difficulty with typically cash flow because you have to continue to buy more inventory. Uh you have supply chain issues, you have to switch suppliers, switch 3PLs so they can handle your volume. All of this stuff happens as you continue to grow.

3:41So, it's more like Hold on. It's more like this. >> [snorts] >> That's the shape of e-com. Right? And then service businesses are more like this. The slowest, but they are steady. And so when you see these four shapes, many of you guys just hit the crappy part of whatever the opportunity that you're on is, and then say there's something wrong with my business, therefore I should stop, rather than seeing it as what it is, which is this is just the nature of how this business works.

4:13This is a feature, not a bug. It's going to be harder for you to attract really good talent in engineering and build software, and you're probably going to be not profitable cuz most software sells for lower ticket most for a period of time, and it takes a long time to get a product to actually be good. And so you're going to basically burn money, burn time for a long period, and then eventually you can scale to the moon, but it takes a long time, sometimes years to get there. And a lot of people don't have that level of tolerance.

4:39Info on the other hand is kind of the exact opposite of that. You can make a lot of money really quickly, a lot being relative, right? You're probably not going to become a billionaire, but you can make a million dollars, and then very quickly it gets very difficult to scale it. I'll say like info specifically more like coaching, things like that. And the reason for that is cuz there's almost no no revenue retention. People don't stay around. Once you learn something, you've learned it. That's why people graduate school. They learned, right? Service businesses, the issue is people, because it's a very people people heavy business. You have to constantly be hiring, onboarding, and training, and it depends on the service you're providing.

5:13If you provide weight loss coaching service or weight loss services, I use that as an example obviously cuz I came from that, you you have you have it's easy for you to get talent because lots of people want to talk about fitness and weight loss and and and and food all day cuz they're like really into it. So it's actually very easy to get good talent. And for below average prices because people would do it for free. On the flip side, customers never want to do it, and so they're canceling all the time. If I had an accounting firm, it's the opposite. Accounting firms have super high annual stick. What's the difficulty with accounting firms? Getting the people who can do accounting. And it's almost always this balance, right? If a lot of people want to do it, there's going to be a lot of competition, there's very low barriers to entry, and as a result, customers have lots of options. And they don't want to do it themselves. If uh there aren't as many options, and you have a sup- supply supply constrained industry, then you're going to have issues getting talent.

6:02Fundamentally. And you can look at this at the business level, but you can also look at the at the at the uh at the industry level. And so I talk about demand constraints and supply constraints at the business level, but you can see if you are way off track based on do you match with your industry. If your industry, and by the way, if you are if you're the inverse of your industry, you're usually doing something either really wrong or really right. Side note. So, great way to think about it. If you can be supply demand constrained in like the cleaning business example that I gave.

6:32If you give supply constraints, sorry, demand constraints, as in I could take a hundred times more customers than I currently am with my cleaning thing, well, then you've either figured out something really amazing with cleaners to like attract them in and like you're about to go hyper scale, or you're just starting out and you haven't done anything yet. There's either something really right or really wrong with what you're doing. But most of the time you probably match the same constraint of your industry. And the problem with not being experienced is you think there's something wrong.

6:58And so then you end up spending multiple years not being all in on your opportunity, and then being upset that it's not growing as fast as you want it to grow. When in reality, you never really gave it a shot because you're always looking you're kind of like the kind of like the guy who's in the marriage that they're like you know, they they were in love a while ago, and you know, there things are okay, but they you know, he's got a wandering eye, right? He's always looking, he's always paying you know, trying to look for the next thing, the next girl, the next whatever. And he's like, "Well, my marriage isn't good."

7:23Alex It's like, "Well, no You're spending all your time looking at these other opportunities rather than doubling down on the thing you got." And when you double down on the thing you got, usually when you take the mar- it takes way less time I would say Okay, I'm not I'm not I'm not going to make broad sweeping statements on marriages, all right? But I will say that in my experience from my n equals one marriage, it takes way less time to go from like we're upset about something to we're really good than it does to create the loyalty, the trust, and the track record that you have from that marriage with someone else.